The Game of Chess

By Jorge Luis Borges

I.
In their grave corners, the players deploy the slow pieces
And the chess board detains them until dawn in its severe compass in which two colors hate each other.

Within it two shares give off a magic strength: Homeric tower, and nimble horse, a fighting queen, a backward king, A bishop on the bias, and aggressive pawns.

When the players have departed, and when time has consumed them utterly, the ritual will not have ended.

The war first flamed out in the east whose amphitheater is now the world. And like the other, the game is infinite.

II.

Slight king, oblique bishop, and a queen blood-lusting, upright tower, a crafty pawn--
Over the black and white of their path. They foray and deliver armed battle.

They do not know it is the artful hand of the player that rules their fate.
They do not know that an adamant rigor. Subdues their free will and their span.

But the player likewise is a prisoner (the maxim is Omar's) on another board of dead-black nights and of the white days.

God moves the player and he, the piece. What god behind GOD originates the scheme of dust and time and dream and agony?